Professional Advice

November is COPD Awareness Month

BY: CDC, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and American Lung Association.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic disease that affects your lungs and airways. There is no cure for COPD, but there are ways to manage and treat the disease. COPD is a term used for irreversible lung and airway damage that obstructs the airways and makes it difficult to breathe. COPD is divided into subcategories such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

Changes in the lungs and airways which count as COPD are loss of elasticity in the airways and air sacks in the lungs, inflammation, scarring and narrowing of the airways, thick mucus in your airways, destruction of the walls between your alveoli, which enlarges them and traps air.

Symptoms include difficulty breathing, thick mucus, wheezing or other lung sounds, cough, tiredness, barrel shaped chest, and bluish skin (cyanosis).

The most common cause of COPD is smoking, but it’s not the only cause. COPD can also be caused by Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (alpha-1) which is a genetic disorder that can lead to lung damage, secondhand smoke, toxins in the air, and exposure to dust and fumes from your job or hobbies.

Not everyone who smokes develops COPD, but certain risk factors increase the chance of developing COPD, such as, females are more likely to develop it, over 65 years of age, have been exposed to toxins in the air, have worked with chemicals, dust, and fumes, have asthma, or had many respiratory infections during childhood.

COPD can trap bacteria in the lungs, leading to infections and prevent oxygens from getting into the body and carbon dioxide from getting out. These can lead to serious complications are pneumonia, high levels of carbon dioxide in your blood, low levels for oxygen in your blood, respiratory failure, pulmonary hypertension, right-sided heart failure, collapsed lung, polycythemia.

There are several ways healthcare providers use to diagnose COPD, including physical examination, gathering information about the patient’s health history, testing lung capacity and ordering images of the patient’s lungs, pulse oximetry, arterial blood gas test, exercise testing, electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG), blood tests, and genetic testing.

The provider can evaluate the patient’s symptoms and risk for exacerbation in three stages, which are mild and low risk, more severe symptoms and low risk, and high risk for exacerbation.

COPD can’t be cured but it can be treated and managed. As COPD is a progressive disease, managing and treating the disease is necessary. While COPD is not always a terminal illness, over time many people with COPD will not be able to breath on their own.

The provider will likely recommend quitting smoking, inhaled medication, oxygen therapy, pulmonary rehabilitation, corticosteroids, positive airway pressure, antibiotics, lung volume reduction, and clinical trials.

The life expectancy for people with COPD is dependent on the severity and progression of the disease. Many people can live for decades after diagnosis, especially with early treatment, while people with stage 3 or 4 have a life expectancy that’s six to nine years shorter than average.